Tag: sustainable

Cru Bourgeois Classification Raises the Environmental Bar

L’Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc announced this week, by press release, that it has significantly raised its environmental standards.

Route des Chateaux, Vineyard in Medoc, amous wine estate of Bordeaux wine, Gironde, France

from the next reclassification exercise (in 2025), all wineries designated crus bourgeois will be required to have demonstrated HEV Level 2 environmental certification. Those seeking classification at Supérieur and Exceptionnel level will be required to have HEV Level 3 certification.

In addition, from 2022, all properties seeking to use their crus bourgeois certification will need to present their wines in bottles that weight no more than 390g (a 22% decrease in the current maximum bottle weight).

The organization states: “with sustainability in mind, the Crus Bourgeois du Médoc has shifted to bottles with less weight. The classification was eager to become a part of the global movement towards more sustainable bottling and packaging, as championed by the famous wine critic Jancis Robinson”.

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Michelin Introduces Sustainable Gastronomy Symbol

The Michelin Guide has unveiled a new green clover symbol in its France guide to indicate restaurants with “commendable environmental practices”.

First revealed at the launch of the Michelin Guide France 2020 on 27 January, the new icon has been allocated to over 50 sustainable restaurants.

Among them is three Michelin-starred Mirazur in Menton which has two hectares of “permaculture vegetable gardens” and also has a zero-waste policy.

The symbol can be given to chefs whose restaurants have been awarded the plate, bib gourmand or 1-3 stars.

Also given the accolade was Parisian Restaurant David Toutain, which collaborates with smallholdings and local craftsmen and matches its food orders with future bookings in order to minimize waste. In addition, Septime, also based in the French capital, was praised for its sustainable food sourcing and its practice of sending all bio-waste to a vermicomposting center to be recycled.

In 2019, the MICHELIN Guide handed out Sustainability Awards to recognize chefs across several destinations rated by the guide, including Angel Leon of three-MICHELIN-starred Aponiente in Spain, Enda McAvoy of one-starred Loam in Ireland, and Heidi Bjerkan of one-starred Credo in Norway.

Commenting on the launch, Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guides, said: “Faced with constantly evolving challenges including production methods, sourcing and waste management, chefs are striving to improve their practices.

“Often, these initiatives combine the best of the knowledge of our predecessors with the creativity and innovation of chefs who are never short of ideas. The ambition of our approach is to amplify the scope of the good and ingenious practices of chefs by putting them in the spotlight.

“The ideas, methods, and know-how developed by these chefs will thus help raise awareness of an entire sector to its customers and the general population.”

The practices and achievements of those restaurants given a sustainability icon will be promoted via the Michelin Guide’s platforms throughout the year.

The list can be found here:

https://guide.michelin.com/mo/en/macau-region/macau/article/news-and-views/michelin-new-sustainable-gastronomy-icon

Sustainable, Organic, Lower-alcohol and Alternative Wine go Mainstream

A recent Sola Report from Wine Intelligence highlights that there is a huge opportunity for the industry to produce more alternative wines.

The Sola Report is an acronym for the alternative wines sector, which includes sustainable, organic, lower-alcohol and other alternative wines. The Sola Report tracks how the alternative wine market changes from year to year, and includes an opportunity index, which crosses 11 markets and 12 sub-categories – this determines where Sola wines have the greatest chance of success.

Emily Carroll, who compiled the report for Wine Intelligence, said the “prominence of the organic movement continues to be evident: organic wine tops the Sola wine opportunity index for the second year in a row, most likely due to the popularity of organic food across the world.

“Following closely behind is Fairtrade wine and generic concept wines ‘sustainably produced’ and ‘environmentally friendly’— all three types associated with a blend of social, economic and environmental responsibility.”

She said increasing awareness among consumers for alternative wines was the result of a “fundamental shift in consumer attitudes, led by the younger generation. What was once seen as ‘hippy’ is now the mainstream, with many consumers, particularly those under the age of 45, adopting socially, environmentally and economically responsible habits. This requires companies to act more ethically responsible and more transparent, which naturally also applies to the wine industry”.

She added that “younger wine drinkers present the most opportunity for alternative wines due to their open-minded attitudes and willingness to invest time, education and money into their health. Young wine drinkers are not only more likely to purchase alternative wines such as organic, Fairtrade or sustainable wines compared with older drinkers, but are also more willing in general to pay a premium for wine in the off- and on-trade”.

However, she said, the challenge would be to “engage this cohort with the alternative wine category, as younger consumers are very much attuned to other drinks categories, like craft beer and gin, and also are less likely to be participants in the alcoholic beverage category to begin with”.

She also said there is “less appeal for alternative wines with more complex titles including orange or skin contact wine as well as biodynamic wine. Interestingly, even though veganism and vegetarianism is on the rise, these two Sola wine categories rank the lowest in the 2019 global Sola wine opportunity index”.

The first Sola report was released in 2018. It surveyed consumer sentiment towards 12 alternative wine types in 11 key wine markets, looking at awareness, purchase intent and affinity towards alternative wines. The 2019 report has been expanded to include vegetarian wine and five new markets and is “now representative of 250 million regular wine drinkers from a broad spread of geography, culture and economic development”.